Hi. We have a contract with a cleaning company who provide cleaning services for our organisation and are based onsite. They employ a large number of cleaning staff, who are all based onsite. The nature of our business means that on some occasions the cleaners that this company employ may be subjected to Violence /Aggression (from confused patients, patients with dementia etc). As an organisation, we provide conflict management training to all our front line staff that we employ to enable them to deal with this issue more effectively. Do we have a responsibility to provide training to these contracted cleaners also? Or, should they be organising their own training for their staff? Morally, I guess we should offer training but wondered where we stand legally. Do we have a duty?

I agree with Fiesta, their employer has main responsibility but yours is an unusual situation and it would benefit you, and I suspect your staff who may have to deal with any situation which arises, to supply the cleaning staff with information and training in seeing the issues coming and how to try and avoid them happening. I would suggest that co-operation between the 2 employers is in order.

Its been a long time since I've been on forum but.... Isnt there a general duty of care to protect everyone from a known risk under law? If they have to be where the higher risk patients are, it makes sense that someone else is also there or enhanced supervision provided by your staff. You could always as the IOSH helpline or H&SE for their opinion based on 'what if' scenarios.... Just a consideration Ian